Merriam Webster’s collegiate dictionary defines the word “bender” as
a spree or “an unrestrained indulgence in or outburst of activity esp:
binge, carousel.” Thus, we might say, “Wow, Joe went on a heck of a bender
that lasted all week.”
To many people in this community, however, the word has a different and
far more nostalgic meaning.
A “bender” to those folks was the innovative machine located in the woodenware
division of the Oval Wood Dish (O.W.D) in a department known as the “Benders.”
Developed in 1939, after almost five years of costly experimentation,
the machine with its dies and plugs produced a wooden spoon that, unlike
other flat wooden spoons on the market, had a deep, graceful bowl shape.
The finished product was labeled the “Rite Spoon” and soon captured a
large market share of the far-reaching wooden spoon business.
The chief designer of the “bender,” as I recall, was a man named Arthur
Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins was a well-liked, highly regarded figure who became
well-known here during his frequent visits to the “Dish” and this community.
Most people called him “Hoppe,” and it was widely rumored that he was
also the developer of a product called Hoppes, a gun-cleaning solvent
that could be found on the shelves of most gun owners in this country.
This was at a time when ammunition contained potassium chlorate primers,
which turns to potassium chloride when fired, a substance not unlike
table salt and highly corrosive to gun barrels.
It should be mentioned that the invention and development of the “bender”
was most timely for the O.W.D.
Like most industries in this country, the company was caught up in the
desperate days of the 1930s economic depression and was in a struggle
for survival.
Year 1940, however, saw an escalated demand for wood products due to
the outbreak of World War II in Europe and resulted in its manufacturing
and woods operations with employment reaching a high of 539 people. The
following year, however, saw this nation drawn into the nightmare of
global conflict with the sneak attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor. It was,
of course, a singular moment in modern American history, a penetration
of our borders by a hostile force. Almost a thousand men and women from
this community joined the armed forces to fight the enemy. This severely
depleted the available work force, and local women quickly rose to the
challenge and became the backbone of production at the O.W.D. No one
realized it at the time, but they would become a microcosm of the nation
at large in which the old rules of gender and expectation changed radically.
It would be the beginning of women in traditionally men’s jobs, a liberation
that continues strong today and, as the parent of seven daughters, this
writer can only highly applaud that change.
High school students also helped fill the worker shortage and with the
cooperation of schools authorities any student willing to work was allowed
to be released from classes in early afternoon to work an abbreviated
four-hour shift. Along with many of my classmates, I worked in almost
every department of that vast plant (the largest plant ever erected in
Franklin County).
From driving the “mercuries,” towing dozens of trailers laden with packaged
products through the corridors that linked the production facilities
to the giant warehouse, which could hold two railroad cars standing at
floor level to permit direct loading (a typical thoughtful design among
many other found throughout the plant by designer John Graham). To the
lumber yards where I piled lumber alongside an incredibly strong Al Becker
(on my first day of work Al secretly nailed my lunch box to the bench
in the warming house located mid-way on the tramway, much to the delight
of fellow workers as I tried in vain to pick it up at the sound of the
company whistle signaling the end of that day’s shift).
My favorite place to work was probably the “benders.” It was a busy,
cheerful place geared to high rates of production. The doctrine of the
“scientific management,” the system of which work is disassembled into
its component parts and the tasks studied for maximum efficiency, was
entering the industrial scene at this time. The theory was that there
had to be “one best way” to execute any job. I remember being fascinated
watching an officer of the company, stopwatch in hand, timing the ladies
on the assembly belt where the spoon “culls” were removed and the final
product packaged in a quest to make their motions less tiring, easier,
and more efficient (a skeptic once told me: “Hell, you don’t need a damn
stopwatch. Just watch the laziest person on the line”).
Overhead, above the “bender” room, were the “rattlers,” a large cage-like
apparatus that made rattling noises as it tossed the spoons contained
inside back and forth and every which way, effectively polishing them
to a high luster. From the rattlers the spoons with a rich woodsy birch
smell dropped into bins where they then were loaded manually (my job)
into hoppers that fed the assembly belt. My foreman in that department
was a lovely lady named Mrs. Beulah Delair, whose great smile and gentle
manner (if you did your job) made the “benders” one of the more pleasant
departments in the O.W.D. factory. Many of those high school students
employed at the “Dish” would enter the military before the war’s end
in 1945. They would return to a prosperous nation and begin to rebuild
their lives. Some would go back to work, others would attend college
(the G.I. Bill allowed one month’s free tuition for every month served
plus a modest stipend. I think $50 per month, which, if you didn’t try
to keep up with the “preppies,” was almost adequate). That bill would
become part of the greatest investments in higher education that any
society ever made and was a brilliant, enduring commitment to the nation’s
future. For their part, the women who kept the O.W.D. wheels turning
during the war’s labor shortage now found their gender at new heights.
Dual incomes are now the norm and provide an increased standard of living
in this community. An evolution still in progress, but given our choices
in this year’s presidential election, it many not be long before a woman
will be our next President.
You go, girl!
O.W.D. History
The O.W.D was founded in Michigan in 1883 by Henry S. Hull. It became
the largest single industry in a community known as Traverse City,
not far from the famous Upper Peninsula in that state. The corporate
name came from its main product in that operation — a thin, shallow,
round wooden bowl that constituted the disposable package of its time.
It was used in grocery stores and meat markets across the nation for
dispensing butter, lard, and ground meat.
During its 24 years of operation in Michigan, the O.W.D. cut 21 million
board feet of hardwood timber and shipped a yearly average of 1,000 railroad
cars filled with its products all over this country and abroad.
In 1916, the hardwood timber ran out and O.W.D. moved to Tupper Lake.
From “Queen City of the North,” Larry Wake field author, 1988